Does this guy know what a white feather symbolizes?
Cowardice.
Posted on 09/14/2009 3:30:02 PM PDT by crazyhorse691
We see the spectacle of the U.S. Congress unable to manage decent health care reform that will actually enable the American citizenry to join the rest of the industrialized world in having health care for all. The problems, it is clear, come from those who are lying.
Death panels? That's true. We already have them. Insurance companies deny care to Americans who then die as a result. It happens every day, Sarah Palin. But ascribing that to the plans in Congress is untrue. In fact, those corporate death panels would be outlawed.
Find the language in Obama's bill that says that illegal immigrants would be covered or admit it's a canard. God forbid we should help some migrant worker who's stricken by illness or accident while laboring in service to Americans. South Carolina's Joe Wilson is just the Tourette tip of a dissembling iceberg.
We can't afford health care reform? That's a whopper. It's all about choice.
If every child in America doesn't have health care but we own more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than half of them on board a fleet of 18 extremely expensive Trident submarines ready to fight the Soviets (hey! Where'd they go?), isn't it time to ask some fundamental questions? One is: Why spend $16.5 billion just on the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons budget for FY 2010 with 47 million uninsured citizens? Does Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., speak for us all when he calls health care a privilege (and presumably threatening life on Earth is a human right for the U.S. military)?
When our working poor are so often without either the money to pay for health insurance or the high costs of health care for ailing family members and yet we somehow manage to justify spending in excess of $915 billion on the so-called War on Terror, shouldn't we engage in some national discussion about priorities?
To spend $1 trillion for war while unemployment pushes 10 percent in more and more states is unconscionable. Unemployment means a loss of health care for a high percentage of those who lose jobs and more foreclosures every month on the American dream of home ownership. Historically, it naturally correlates with increases in crime.
The U.S. is the last of the so-called developed countries to fail to insure the unemployed and underemployed, and we have the highest crime rates. So many thousands of us are shot each year that we more than qualify to be considered at war inside our own borders. Much of that carnage relates to social problems like unemployment, lack of health care and simple hopelessness.
Does it not seem that when the U.S. can afford and not question nearly 1,000 military bases on other people's sovereign soil -- 287 of them in Germany alone -- that we can afford to create jobs? Rather than have our young people learning how to hurt others in the military, we could end economic conscription, lower the crime rate, drastically reduce the numbers of uninsured, reverse the home foreclosure numbers and enhance our nation's productivity by offering minimum-wage jobs to anyone willing to work. Those jobs would include housing in some cases, health care benefits in all cases, and on-the-job training and supplementary education for those needing it. Closing foreign military bases until these programs were paid for would be a giant leap for the U.S. back toward the health of our workforce, our economy, our educational system and our very citizenry.
No one is talking about this? True. So it's time to start.
Tom H. Hastings is director of Portland-based PeaceVoice, a founder of the Whitefeather Peace Community, and is on the faculty of conflict resolution graduate program at Portland State University.
Written by another member from the Clown Universe!
You can buy a catastrophic coverage plan for under 50 bucks a month.
Go to e health insurance and you can search and find whatever you want.
The “health care” bill (and most everything else) Congress tries to pass as law isn’t about caring for America.
It’s about power, control and money.
And I say, “SCREW ‘EM ALL!”
Does this guy know what a white feather symbolizes?
Cowardice.
He still gets it wrong about “death panels”. If they limit treatment based on cost-benefit decisions that neither you nor your doctor were party to, thats your death panel.
Yes, that already happens now. But the system is still porous, you can still get around some of these limitations if you are determined, if you have some of your own money, if your doctor knows how to work the system.
Under O-care, that system becomes much more definitive and much harder to evade. Your doctor will have a menu of treatment options to choose from and thats it. Its disingenuous to pretend that its otherwise (disingenuous is a nice way of saying “liar”) when Obama himself and some of his inner circle are on record arguing for precisely this kind of cost-benefit analysis for patients who are past their “sell-by” dates.
Blab on all you want about imperialist militarists and it doesn’t change the fact that O himself has called for death panels, and in very plain language.
Oh, they won’t be CALLED “death panels”, no more than the ones ascribed to insurance companies’ underwriting boards are called “death panels”. But there is always appeal to the rulings of the underwriters, whereas in the instance of the government board that rules on the acceptability of any given course of treatment, there is no timely appeal possible. Therefore, the government board that denies a specific and effective course of treatment has essentially acted as the “death panel”, and in the inertia that is built into any bureaucracy, no effective review shall ever be made. And even if there is, what recourse does the affected individual, or the survivors, even have? Can’t sue the king, unless he agrees, and that, my friend, is getting to be a less likely probability as time goes on.
Especially if such appeals are treated as sources of “fraud” and “waste”, which stimulates a fertile field for investigations into cost overruns and poor administration of what may become very limited resources.
Who is this guy? Tom Hastings? Never heard of him. I can see why, he’s a dope. He states:
“Does it not seem that when the U.S. can afford and not question nearly 1,000 military bases on other people’s sovereign soil — 287 of them in Germany alone...”
When I was in Europe, many if not most of these installations were called FOBs; forward operating bases. Manned by skeleton crews FOBs were in case of Soviet invasion. When our A-10s took off from my base in the U.K, they were supposed to kill ten tanks for every one aircraft loss. The FOBs were there for refueling, rearming, and the like. Many of these bases are now closed. There are only a few remaining active air bases in the U.K still active.
So this guy is probably looking at some numbers from the 1980s when we did have a bunch of foreign military locations. Which is why I say he’s a dope. For a critical thinker, he has no sound arguments, nor are his facts up to date. What he argues has no bearing on the debate at hand.
If I had written in my graduate class what Hastings wrote, the professor would have ripped me a new one.
I was a benefits rep for my company who insured over 10,000 retirees and I never once received a complaint from a relative who said their parent or grandparent was denied care....
For the life of me, I don't know where these liars come up with these bogus facts............
If the author wants to be someone else’s slave, that’s his business. However, to advocate using the power of the state to enslave others, so that they will be compelled (ultimately, by men with guns) to pay for the health care of others is vile, inexcusable evil. The author should be ostracized, forbidden to hold any job funded by taxpayers, and boycotted.
Gosh, he works at a university! Whoda thunk?!!
Are we reading the same article or am I missing your point; for I agree with your post and know the cost and process of healthcare...when someone writes an article from this point of view they are from the Clown Universe. What I responded to was;
...we own more than 6,000 nuclear weapons
...spend $16.5 billion just on the Department of Energy’s
...spend $1 trillion for war while unemployment pushes 10 percent
Hastings should get a classic education in Econ 101…see: http://www.usdebtclock.org
Tom, no one should die because they posted health-care talking points that one time too many. Don’t be that guy.
Not making a point, just stating a fact for those who might want to see whats out there. n.p.
Yes. Here's one. Where did you thieves get the idea you have a right to steal from me? Here is another. Where did you get the right to buy votes to make me your slave? Like many Americans I am getting a bit angry that you libtards think you can do to me whatever you will. Where did you get your sense of self righteousness?
Pick one please.
Dems voted down an amendment to forbid public money spent for health care for illegals. Everyone involved knows without such a provision, it will be so spent, with providers simply not asking and not telling, just billing the Feds. The author of the article knows it too, he just thinks it is slick. It isn't, it is transparent lying.
Another assclown heard from.
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